Arizona needs Fostercare City

There enough foster children in Arizona to make a town the size of Douglas, population 16,915.

Maybe that's the answer: Fostercare City.

Imagine if every resident of Douglas needed therapy after a traumatic experience – but didn't get it.

Imagine if those residents were all at an increased risk of substance abuse, incarceration and suicide.

Imagine if new residents were being dropped off at emergency shelters because there was no other place for them.

Imagine if more than 40 percent of the population was under five years old.

Maybe the Facebook videos of thousands of waiting faces would make people notice.

If so, it might make sense to cluster all Arizona's foster kids in a single place where the sheer numbers would make them impossible to ignore.

As it is, the nearly 17,000 kids in Arizona's foster care system are mostly invisible.

Some of these kids were taken from wicked abuse.

All of them need therapy. They've been through Hell. But too many of them don't get it.

Most of the kids in foster care -- 83 percent – were taken into state custody because of neglect, not abuse.

All of them need therapy, too. It's not easy being sent to live among strangers. But too few of them get it.

Foster parents have complained for years that it is tough to get the state to provide the emotional and psychological help foster kids need.

A class action lawsuit on behalf of foster kids cites, among other things, "a severe shortage" of physical, mental and behavioral health services for children in the state's care.

There's another problem: Some of those kids who were removed because of neglect – maybe a lot of them – might have been able to stay at home if Mom or Dad had gotten some help with job training or housing or substance abuse treatment.

But Arizona cut funding for in-home services aimed at keeping kids with their families. Funding dropped from $43 million in 2008 to $22 million in 2012, according to the lawsuit filed by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest and others. In 2004, the state ended a program that offered services to children at risk of abuse or neglect.

As a result, the number of kids in foster care sky-rocketed. From 10,303 in September 2008 to 16,990 in September 2014, the last official count.

Maybe if they'd been in one place, people would have yelled: stop.

The failure to take care of those kids is reflected in other numbers from the state.

Last September, there were 4,397 licensed foster homes, with 9,061 spaces available for kids, according to figures from the Department of Child Safety. In September 2008, there were 3,615 homes with 7,116 spaces available, according to state numbers.

There are more foster kids, but fewer of them have foster homes these days.

Yet what we hear is not the howling outrage of a state that shares the pain of kids. What we here is a bunch of political whining and bickering.

Maybe Fostercare City is the only way Arizona will notice what's going on.